The Barriers To Information And Knowledge Sharing Information Technology Essay

Information and knowledge sharing has become increasingly relevant in an organization since the transfer from an industrial economy based on a hierarchical control to a global, information-driven financial system and decentralized. Information and knowledge management from human is new and very tangible as well as technological side. The problems associated with sharing information and knowledge is to be briefly informed as one of the basic activities of information and knowledge management. Changes both in community culture and in deployed technological solutions and work procedures are required by the knowledge management. This serves as an essential of interaction between technological and social subsystems which demonstrates the information that searching, storing, manipulation and sharing of enormous volume of information are enabled by IT. Moreover, the conversion of data into information with minimum time and space constraints are enabled.

The crucial consequence is the fact that in information and knowledge sharing IT plays an important role but not an essential one. The goal is to turn over the existence of some barriers to information and knowledge sharing in an organization. In this report, the main purpose is described to the types of barriers, conflict of motives as a special individual difficulty arising partially from other barriers and how to overcome these barriers in an organization.

2. Types of barriers

There are many types of barriers to information and knowledge sharing in organization such as culture barriers, legal barriers, technology barriers and social barriers, etc. Two different approaches can be identified to support information and knowledge sharing in organization. The first approach is based on the change of corporate culture that accommodates to information and knowledge management system. The second one as more successful is based on accommodating of information and knowledge management system to existing corporate culture. Common culture barriers are existed in both approaches. Therefore, the identification of subjective and objective nature of the information and knowledge are necessary. The object in a form of explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge can be existed. But social practices of teams, working groups and departments form the subjective components of the information and knowledge which are also important. The information and knowledge consequent sharing are affected by social practices as the elements of corporate culture of the community. A kind of culture knowledge modification can be met because the sum of information can consider the knowledge in the context which is dependent on the creation of social group. Effective upon transparency in information and knowledge sharing can only be become in appropriate corporate culture which should be the correct routing of this modification. Therefore, the right corporate culture is very necessary. Cultural constraints are the main problems that can be divided into individual and social barriers.

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Individual barriers

Some confidence of value or work can be ensured as knowledge is the power by providing knowledge to the collaborator the individuality of influence is reduced which is the loss of power. Especially, uncertainty can be felt younger and less experienced employees because they can not judge if the valuable knowledge is represented for others by the operational results. For junior staff, it may be difficult to estimate the value of their knowledge for else members of staff or the business as a whole. Another one is fear from exposure by providing knowledge which has a value. If other repository users not share this assessment, embarrassment may occur. Moreover, single culture elements is which employees are not able to concretely name central corporate principles, desires and goals although a lot about the business are known. Mostly, some employees have just responsiveness of the problem which is the difference between awareness and information.

Social barriers

Language is one of the social barriers which in some business organization or companies the language used in one segment or division is incomprehensible for others. Therefore, the main language should be appreciated. In structure of individuals, there can be better comprehensible tacit knowledge, opinions and attitude, etc. Changes can be recognized effort to avoid by conflict avoidance and don’t risk so much. New knowledge and approaches are affected for containing new thoughts or original points of view can be lost. Procedures and approaches are often used by high level of government and administrative association type declining information and knowledge sharing. Another fact is bad assessment of the co-worker information and knowledge base which communication plays an important role in information and knowledge sharing. If the process of communication will be respected, this type of barrier can be found as coding of idea which means initiative transmission to the language understandable by the receiver. Moreover, the motivation of employees is affected by emotions to share knowledge and information with anyone. It is difficult to induce employees for sharing information and knowledge with unfriendly and unpleasant relationship.

3. Overcoming these barriers

Overcoming culture barriers to sharing information and knowledge have more to do with how to design and implement the information and knowledge management effort than with changing the culture. Balancing the visible and invisible dimension of culture and obviously demonstrating the importance of sharing information and knowledge are involved. Some overcoming points can derived about aligning information and knowledge sharing with the organization culture. Firstly, a visible connection is made between sharing information, knowledge, organization goals and problems for creating an information and knowledge sharing culture. Next point is that core values widely hold to link sharing information and knowledge. By linking with core values of the organization, sharing information and knowledge is made consistent with peers’ opportunity and managers’ considerations. For sharing information and knowledge, human networks is one of the key points in an organization by building a sharing culture to enhance the networks already existing. Finally, ideas and insights have already shared to recruit the support of people in organization and ask significant managers for encouraging and pressuring to share their information and knowledge.

4. Conclusion

In conclusion, effective knowledge and information sharing are often prevented by culture barriers including individual and social barriers. Therefore, the maximum number of these barriers is necessary to be identified and eliminated. Some of them are possible to eliminate absolutely but some of them will still remain. The relation to the given conditions is necessary to be minimized by these remaining barriers. Culture barriers are more crucial for sharing information and knowledge in an organization. Moreover, the ways how to overcome of these barriers are discussed finally.